Right, so about our neighborhood…the first Saturday that I was back in China I woke up around 7:00 or so, cleaned up a little bit of stuff around the apartment, checked my mail, did some other random stuff and by 9:00 was pretty much bouncing off the walls going stir crazy. I talked to Jessica for a little while and then decided to pack up some stuff and go out for a bike ride. At first, I was just going to stay around the neighborhood but ended up just going and going until the major street that we lived on ended. Then I hung a right and went until that street ended. That lead me to a pretty much major industrial district, so I just decided to come back home. I did see a couple of interesting things though of interest. Before I get into that though, let me take a step back and familiarize you all with a brief introduction to the city of Shanghai…since there were so many of you that forgot to visit last year.
Don’t fear though as my company has decided that “current business needs” have led to us staying here “for a period of an additional 9 to 12 months”. I have no idea how they arrived at that window of time, but regardless it gives everyone more time to visit.
OK, so anyway when you all make your travel arrangements to fly in you will land at Shanghai Pudong International Airport (PVG).
PVG currently has two terminals, as shown in that picture. All of that stuff in the middle is basically parking, as well as the Maglev station. The Maglev is a pretty cool experience. It is a train that basically connects the airport to an area of the city that has more options when it comes to public transportation. Normally, it takes 45 minutes by car to get from the airport to the other Maglev station, but the Maglev train makes the trip in about seven minutes. You travel at a max speed of 431 km/h (268 mph).
There is another airport in Shanghai that is primarily a domestic airport. It is on the west side of the city in an area called Hongqiao (Hong-Chow). It is an older airport that is getting ready to have a fairly substantial renovation done to it. When it gets completed, it will look like the pictures shown below.
OK, so here is a model of the city of Shanghai. All of the stuff on the left of the picture is called Puxi (Poo-Shee) which literally means ‘west of the river; and all of the stuff of the right side of the picture is called Pudong (Poo-Dong) which means, you guessed it, ‘east of the river.’
Here is a view of the city if you were looking at it from the west side looking towards the downtown area.
Here is a picture looking into the city center from the south side of the city.
And here are some pictures of the waterfront area of the city. 
For me, the waterfront area is my favorite part of the city. The Puxi side has a historic area known as the Bund and the Pudong side has an area known as Lujiazui. You can see the Pearl Tower in the pictures which is close to the water front. Then, two blocks back you can see a group of tall buildings. The one closest to the Pearl Tower is called the Jim Mao tower which I believe is currently the third tallest building in the world. In the block right next to it, literally right across the street, the Shanghai World Financial Center is being built. When completed, it will be the first or second tallest building in the world. There is a museum in Shanghai called the urban planning museum, which is where I got all of these pictures. It is actually a pretty neat museum.
So anyway, if you were to go to the general area that is pointed out in the picture below, you would come to a part of the city known as Jinqiao (Jean-Chow), which is where our apartment is.
So anyway, if you were to go to the general area that is pointed out in the picture below, you would come to a part of the city known as Jinqiao (Jean-Chow), which is where our apartment is.
This is the entrance to our apartment complex. The first floor of each one of the buildings that face the street are all actually commercial buildings. That store there on the right is actually an iStore that opened up with we were back in the States.
Right next to our apartment complex is one of the international schools that are in our area. This is Dulwich College, which is actually a British school. This building is the elementary and middle school. 
The large yard area in front is a sports field. They play soccer/football, cricket, softball, rugby and all other kinds of sports in this area. They have adult and kid leagues that play all year round. Right across the street is another large sports field where they have the same and then lined along it is a Starbucks and various other international restaurants.
If you go down a couple of blocks and hang a left, then you can get to our doctors office (Parkway Health)…
…or if you hang a right you can get to the church that we go to (Abundant Grace International Fellowship).
If you go around the corner from the church, then you can get to the school that Gabe will start going to this fall. Here is a picture of the elementary wing (I think).
Actually, it was hard to get a good picture of the front of the school because it is along a tree lined street that blocks out most of the views, plus it is a pretty large campus which means you have to be kind of far away to get a decent shot of it. If you are really interested in it, then you can just check out their website. They have a whole portion of their website where you can download videos and pictures (http://www.ciss.com.cn/Media_Gallery).
Alright, so if you get back on the main street that we live off of and keep going, then you will eventually run into a few manufacturing sites. One of the ones that I came across was an SC Johnson facility. It is a family company. I have no idea what they make there…maybe bug spray or something.
So a couple of blocks later, it just pretty much dead ends. You can hang a right now and it pretty much just takes you into an industrial area. However, at the end of that road, there is a pretty neat little site. If you could say that China is pretty much the North Pole when it comes to Christmas, then I found the area where they keep Santa’s sleigh. At the end of the second street was a huge sea container manufacturing and holding area. It was another one of those sites where it was so large that you just couldn’t get a good picture to contain it all. 
I can’t even begin to tell you how much larger that area was as compared to what you see in the pictures. I took both of them about a half block away. From the gate looking into the holding yard, all that you could see were rows and rows and rows of these containers stacked this high.
This brings me to another interesting part of Shanghai…the Shanghai Seaport. The port is actually not in Shanghai, but rather on an island quite a bit away from the city. The lighting was bad at the museum so it was hard to get a good picture, but this gives you an idea of what it looks like at least.
That road that you see running into the island is basically how all of the freight is transported into the shipyard. It is a bridge that is over 32 km long (just over 20 miles). I got to go there a little over a year ago when we were bringing some inspection equipment over to our plant here from America. It was impressive to say the least. Almost all of the product that is produced at the facility that I work at in China is shipped out of this port. The products that I work on here get shipped to India, Germany, Brazil, America, Mexico, Korea and Italy. The rest of it, though a small portion stays here in China.
So anyway, that is probably more than you wanted to know about Shanghai and where we live. It gives you an idea about the city though. It truly is an amazing place.
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